I'm just here to better myself as a person.

Notes on the news

SOPA and Keystone XL pipeline have been covered ad nauseam lately so I won’t be weighing in on either. But, I will say this … the fact that knickers were all twisted up because folks couldn’t access Wikipedia today is just plain sad. Wikipedia? Really? Where folks can add their own facts, make up crap and post it as truth without any repercussions for passing on false information?

Wait … what am I talking about here? The press?

I need a nap.

Plus, both subjects are not as fun and fucked up as the following stories.

Perhaps he should’ve tripped in an entirely different manner. I mean, he sure is rambling on and on like he’s taken one too many hits of window pane. The wreckage of the Costa Concordia is tragic and what makes the tragedy even worse is Capt. Francesco Schettino’s big, fat yap.

Case in point when asked why/how he ended up in a lifeboat with his passengers.

From The Inquistr.

“I was helping some passengers put the life boat to sea. At a certain point the mechanism for lowering it, blocked. We had to force it. Suddenly the system unblocked itself and I tripped and I found myself inside the life boat with a number of passengers.”

Oh really? I hear the Colosseum in Rome is for sale too.

Too bad he’s married because he’s a keeper.

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I’m anti-death penalty for reasons I’m not going to get into right now.

Maybe murdering people isn’t such a good idea — ever. If you do end up offing a few folks and end up with shitty legal representation, you could end up with a bag over your head and dirt nap time drugs coursing through your veins.

“Alabama death row inmate Cory Maples is being given a new hearing after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a rare exception. Attorney’s for the death row inmate failed to file an appeals deadline because of a weird chain of events, an appeal the court believes may have helped his case.

In 1997 Maples was convicted of murdering two people, at the time two lawyers for big name New York Law firm Sullivan & Cromwell volunteered to work on his appeal.

After filing an initial appeal both attorney’s left the law firm as the case began to proceed through Alabama’s court system. When letters were sent to the lawyer’s at Sullivan & Cromwell after they had left their posts they were sent back to their sender, causing the deadline to be missed.

Years after the incident Maples realized what had occurred and petitioned the state court system, unfortunately they shot down his claim at which point his lawyers petitioned the US Supreme Court.”

Ahhh … the South. You know the section of the United States that the rest of the country turns a blind eye to when folks below the Mason-Dixon say and do stupid shit. It’s quite gauche these days to say “Oh it’s the South –what do you expect?” As a nation, we gotta stop with that shoulder-shrugging ‘whatever’ attitude whenever residents of the southern states acts out in an archaic manner.

“In her majority opinion Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that Cory Maples was the victim of ”extraordinary circumstances quite beyond his control.”

Gosh, ya think?

This is an interesting ruling though. Let’s hope the SCOTUS starts to look at all death penalty appeals cases with a sharper eye in the future… maybe start paying attention to that wacky thing called DNA evidence. Just a thought.

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Finally, if Marky Mark looked like this if he had been on one of the hijacked planes, perhaps he could’ve delayed the horrible inevitable by about … oh … five minutes.

If he had treated the hijackers like he treated Jack Horner and his crew, he probably would’ve staved off the horrible inevitable for another minute.